There is a great gap between craftsmanship and “Zokusha (gang-bike)” culture in social evaluation, and those cultures have never been merged together. However, the craftsman and “Kyushakai” (old motorbike lovers) have common interests on uniqueness and narrative made by handcrafting, and both pose questions on uniformity of industrial products made by mass production.
“Kogei-Zokusha” is a collaborative project by craftsman, artists, and gang-motorbike engineers to handcraft a Zokusha with the traditional metal hammering technique. Merge together differences and commonalities of craft and Zokusha culture into one motorbike to investigate and expose the traditional concept of craft that has not been updated for a long time by the context of technics and Japanese folk art.

Concept Movie

As part of our pre-production research, we explored the current state of the culture by riding alongside them on their touring trips, and recorded our pre-works as ‘REVVING TALKS’ in order to get a closer look at the reality of current biker-gangs, called ‘Kyushu-kai’.

Field Work / REVVING TALKS